thinkers

Smits's work equips him to bring the orang-utan's plight to a global audience. His tales include that of a female orang-utan who stumbled from a burning forest with her child. She waited until a human drove by then remained deathly still as the man raced from the car, rescued her baby and drove away.
Only when she saw her child was in the hands of humans did she turn around and clumsily go back into the smoke of the burning forest," Smits says. SMH

Willie Smits Thinkers of the Jungle: The Orangutan Report
Melbourne launch (see BOS)
Sydney

baked

I purchased this heavy tome on Cakes:




It sells for about 75 dollars, (insert thrifty disclaimer here about vouchers and discounts) and is rather swish in the manner of these thick as a brick, sensitive new age manuals, with fabulous triple-tested recipes and beautiful photographs. I like it very much.

Not sure if the history has been triple-tested though:


Eventually, in the early 19th century, electric and gas stoves were introduced...
 

ex jewelry

Ex-Boyfriend Jewelry via bifurcated rivets

The thumbnails create a strange gallery where iconic imagery is given a new script.





(Or where semiotics is given the finger)

car 30

- and this clip set my lift-phobia back a few years/floors.


Update Nick Paumgarten on Late Night Live

misc links

Bakelite doll's house furniture
bakelite museum I like


also via I like, and The Lark,
Ladybird prints
contains over 4000 images from the Ladybird Books, now available to browse and buy

and I googled my way back to The Lark after searching for Topsy and Tim.
I grew up with Monday and found Tuesday recently on a Friday.



After seeing the map cape, another cloak via fed by birds
The hood could be used to carry shopping or other possession, or even a young baby, as in the 1814 print shown below.


Kombi sidecar at the Presurfer

clusters

I've been in the reading, not posting lurking mode, which means an accumulation of things seen, and a couple of musings on the nature of blogging (by two of the finest) were noted:

...the ausblogosphere is simply not one sphere at all. It’s built like a minimally overlapping bundle of 3-d venn diagrams. We all form our own clusters and tend to think of the one we live in as the ‘real’ blogosphere. When all the time there are dozens of other gangs rubbing along out there just as self-sufficiently. It’s not just generic clusters either. There are christian knitters and lefty knitters, diy aestheticians who are more interested in the concept of knitting than in extreme technical proficiency; conservative and progressive lit bloggers; and there are people who just blog about whatever but run together because of temperamental affinities
Laura at Troppo

...fortunately one of the beauties of blogging is in the delicate balance that one can maintain between self-presentation and the cerebral.

But whatever the nature of that balance, a sense of common cause and fellow feeling is what motivates the interaction between bloggers. There will be, at the least, a seepage of data from even the most tight-lipped of writers and with those a little more ready to transmit the odd signal or two, much will go inferred by a reader on the same general wavelength.
Dick

(something of an aside in a post concerning the most fundamental verities that drive my life forward, but I love that phrase: "a seepage of data")

where-able

Wish there was a Melways version of this analogue gps map cape.
I could wear that.

whistlin

When are they going to release Great Bicycling Songs on abc records?

A family favourite for riding our Malvern Stars around the garden was I love to Whistle as seen (on black and white tv saturdays) in Mad About Music

cousins

and only now have caught up with The Cousins

beach dogs

A blue heeler does not love the ocean



- well this blue heeler, anyway.
When I used to take my labrador to the beach, his joy was visible.
His joy was audible.
But Flo can take it or leave it.
She may look like she's enjoying the water, but she's merely doing a low-key scan of the horizon as always, on the lookout for something to herd.
She was more interested in the foreshore, walking on a leash.
She had a bit of a paddle, because it was there.
But she didn't leap, dig, swim, wag or cut loose.
A labrador belongs here.
A blue heeler turns her back on it.

holiday snap

power dressing

...an electric headlight to help her to find an honest man...


YouTube at cynical C: a 1930's futuristic look at fashions for 2000

quiz

Quiz Night
Esquire Napkin Fiction


via Grow a Brain

unmitigated

I like Unmitigated England A Country Lost and a Country Found
via I like.


(Not many blogs make me read through all the archives)

inspection

Did an Open for Inspection on Saturday, inspecting memories, a place I used to live in 20 years ago.
Naturally the house has been given (to quote Meredith) the Gut-n-Smeg.
All Victorian character gone, now generic townhouse in innercityville with decking and succulents and OSP.
Now worth a cool mil in this overheated market.

I used to love the view from the upstairs window looking east- sky, terraces, treelines. It was a good writing place.
Now you can't see out.
Smoked glass means you can't see through the privacy.

Gone for good: the bad wiring, the 'Victerranean' aqua paint, the outside toilet.
(And the Rottie next door who'd leap against the fence barking whenever anyone went)
And gone for good is heritage, a sense of connection.

mon oncle

 
PCL: Theme from "Mon Oncle", by Latin Combo.


(meanwhile over at yootoob the trailer)

bernie

... in Street

in Footscray


(on behalf of Bwca)

wiki

...it just feels good to find something there—even, or especially, when the article you find is maybe a little clumsily written. Any inelegance, or typo, or relic of vandalism reminds you that this gigantic encyclopedia isn't a commercial product. There are no banners for E*Trade or Classmates.com, no side sprinklings of AdSense.

The Charms of Wikipedia via things

- this was via mefi who saw parallels with mefi, as I did with blogging

...It worked and grew because it tapped into the heretofore unmarshaled energies of the uncredentialed...
...the point of convergence for the self-taught and the expensively educated. The cranks had to consort with the mainstreamers and hash it all out—and nobody knew who really knew what he or she was talking about, because everyone's identity was hidden behind a jokey username.

floats

Images from the Moomba Parades from 1962 - 1965


(prompted by Tim's Sars post)

knees up

One's google referrers can be useful, or alerting and alarming. Yesterday as I was checking the hits for my two staples - pachabel's canon for bagpipes and doorbell rings by itself - I noticed a search for Let's Knock Knees

I blogged about this gloriously goofy number a few years ago, in pre-YouTube yore. I was even inspired to write some lines about it.

Prompted by that referrer, I checked to see if it had made the yt cut - et voila:



Loverly.

I don't think I'd write about that sequence in quite the same vein again, (a simple wtf might suffice) although I still like these lines ok:

and then the chorus of odd choreography
all patellar reflex and kneeing in groin
flirtation of bathing suits and cravat dudes
dancing dud sex

and I do like the cricket pads/who knows what it all means ...